Most Precious Blood
by Kristilee
Summary: This story is about 14th century Russian princess named Ariana. The beginning takes place in the year 1318 when Ariana is seventeen. I actually named this story after my church. Someday I hope to publish this, so please don't take my idea! Read and review
1. Chapter 1

All my life, I had been searching for something. I knew I was different, regardless of what others believed, I knew there was more out there then what I had, even though I was told I had nothing to complain about.

My father told me that I had been born into a rich Russian family. When a war broke out it Russia, I was given to my parent's friends; the King and Queen of Uzbekistan. My brother, who would soon be taking over my father's throne, was friendly with the Prince of Moscow. On his most recent visit to see Prince Yuriy, he chose to bring me along. It was not until some time later that he revealed to me his plans for me to marry the Prince. To this day, I am still appalled at his decision. The Prince was thirty-four years old and previously married to a women he was rumored to have taken to the gallows. I was only seventeen. The man I was to marry was only three years younger then my own father!

The minute he told me, I began to object. I knew that was a mistake even before I opened my mouth. My brother hit me for the first time in my life. The shock alone kept my mouth closed for three entire days. On the fourth day, the only words I uttered were 'I do'.

My life went steadily downhill after that. I hardly ever was permitted to go back to my own castle. In fact, the only family I saw during the first month of my marriage was my brother. I was disappointed that my father never visited, but I refused to show my emotions.

It was soon made my job to listen to the tedious demands of peasants and occasionally make a public appearance with the man I was married to. I refused to call him my husband. We both silently agreed that the only time we would spend together would be during those public occasions and when he would require me to produce an offspring for him. Which, I hoped, would not be anytime soon.

On the occasions where we did spend time together, he made it a practice of hitting me. Only, unlike my brother, he hit with much more power. Often times I would spend my nights in the infirmary of the castle.

Over time, I became stronger. Regardless of the fact that I was female, I could withstand pain more then any of the other men in the castle. On one occasion, a young guard that I had startled in the dead of the night accidentally stabbed me with the head of his spear. I didn't flinch as the blood oozed down my skin onto the floor. I simple grabbed the weapon, threw it as his feet and returned to my bedchamber. The man was hung the next morning, but even death had not wiped the look of astonishment off his face.

Shortly after, the Prince declared war with Tver. I didn't know it then, but that war would change my life. Never again would I ever be the same.


	2. Chapter 2

It was June of 1318 and for the first time since I had moved here, the sun was shining. I loved the sun. Perhaps it was because I admired fire so much. The way it could destroy what could take hundreds of years to build in a matter of seconds. Or maybe that I longed for the warming sensation it left on my skin that not even the brightest torch could impersonate. But the truest reason was because it reminded me of the summers back at home.

It wasn't that I didn't like Russia. I enjoyed the snow and the cold temperature didn't bother me. It was the everlasting cloak of clouds in the sky put me in an unpleasant mood. On more then one occasion, I had ordered an innocent peasant to the dungeons because I was too irritable to deal with his concerns. Had it not been for one of my advisers putting sense back into my head, I would have had a few of them hung too.

But now that the sun was hanging high over the castle, my spirits had lifted. I managed to make it to the grounds without any interruptions and chose a seat on my favorite marble bench beneath a young birch tree. It was quite outside, save for the chirping of Nightingale's. I allowed myself to rest my head on the bench, and the next thing I heard was the panicked voice of my clothing mistress begging me to wake up.

"Princess Konchaka!," she loudly whispered, tapping me on the shoulder. Wrinkling my nose in disgust, I chose to not to correct her mistake. I hated my named and begged everyone in the castle to simply call me 'Your Highness' and I wondered what was so important that she had forgotten my demand.

"Hmm?," I mumbled, my eyes still shut tight as I turned my head away from her. Today was my day to relax and I intended to do just that. What on Earth was could be so important that she had to disturb me from my rest? (I later realized that was a stupid question to ask myself. After all, the Prince had recently declared a war.)

"They're here," she shrieked as I snapped my eyes open and quickly sat upright.

"Who's here?" I asked, although I had a pretty good guess what the answer was. A moment later, as if to prove my suspicions correct, three warriors dressed in grey armor with the Tver symbol of a crown sitting upon a throne appeared in the doorway to the castle. Before I even had time to react, the middle warrior had released an arrow which tore through the chest of my mistress standing less than one meter away from me.

I wanted to scream for help, but just as I had opened my mouth, a hand was roughly placed in front of it and a knife was held to my throat.

"Don't make a sound," the man hissed as his rotting breath reached my nose and nearly knocked my out. I silently vowed not to make a sound if he promised never to open his mouth again.

Oddly enough, I wasn't scared. My brain was functioning better then it ever had before as plans to escape this man's clutches began to form. I wouldn't need to outrun him for very long. We were close to the castle gates and if I screamed loud enough I was sure someone would meet me in no more then thirty seconds. There was always at least four large men guarding the gates and I was sure they would give their lives to protect me.

Without much contemplating, I bit the man's large gloved hands very hard. He immediately dropped his knife on the floor and swore loudly as I kicked him in the knee and ran off in the direction of the castle screaming at the top of my lungs.

Almost a minute had passed and still there was no reply. The man behind me had his hands outstretched and could almost reach my neck. I was a fast runner, but so was the warrior chasing me.

It finally occurred to me that no one had answered my screaming yet. Surely there were men guarding the gates, so why were they not helping me? I had nearly screamed myself hoarse and I knew my breath would not last much longer. Someone needed to come. Now.

Shortly after this realization, I reached the gate and shook it frantically. The moment I touched it, two dead bodies fell to the floor and the man behind me had his hands gripped tightly around my neck. However, I was hardly paying him any attention to him as I tried to identify the two corpses. My eyesight was not the greatest and I couldn't make out either of their faces, but it was easy to identify the horseman slaying the dragon which symbolized my castle's coat of arms.

"Don't you ever think of trying that again," the warrior growled angrily in my ear. Seconds later, before I could even hope to defend myself, something very hard hit the side of my head and knocked me unconscious. I tried to fight the blackness overtaking my senses, but it was no use.

I woke up in a very dark place with the sound of many men's voices commanding their horses to stop.

I had arrived at the castle of Tver.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N- I'm so sorry that it's been so long since I've updated. I've been very busy with both school and all four of my sports. Thank you so much for the reviews and bearing with me. Also, I'm sorry if this chapter isn't very good. It was one of those much needed filler-sections and a way for me to introduce the Prince's brother. You'll find out why that's needed next chapter. Trust me, the good vampire stuff is on its way.**

I very quickly became aware of the fact that I couldn't breath. Taking a good guess, I assumed that I was in some sort of box or bag. Thrashing around, I desperately kicked and clawed at anything I could get my hands on. It turned out to be a useless attempt. The only material I had managed to rip was a few places on my dress. Panting heavily, I then realized how stupid I was to make myself use up even more breath then I had already. I felt my throat constricting as it desperately longed for a breath of air. I knew I had little more then a minute or so to live. My body wanted to sob tears of anger, but I wouldn't let it. I refused to be discovered dead with tears rolling down my eyes.

Just as I felt my body shutting down, a large wave of light passed over my eyes, followed by a heavy thudding sound which I later realized was my body hitting the floor. I knew I wasn't dead because of how hard my heart was pounding against my chest, but if I wasn't dead, then where was I?

I didn't have to look up at the faces in front of me before I came up with the answer to my question. The odd accents and peculiar smell told me exactly where I was. One look around confirmed my answer. I was outside the castle of Tver with little over a dozen or so other captured prisoners from my Kingdom. The looks of shock on their faces led me to believe that they assumed I was dead. Scrutinizing the other prisoners, I couldn't locate the Prince.

Not that I cared. A part of me hoped he was dead. Serves him right for what I assumed would end up happening to me.

Two ugly, sweat-covered men tied my wrists together behind my back while another tied my ankles to the men next to me. I felt him lift up my dress once as a smirk stole across his twisted face. I had some nasty words for him on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them, knowing that they would get me nowhere.

Biting my tongue and looking beyond the perverted man at my ankles, I allowed myself to scan the crowd gathering in front of me. It took me a few moments until I realized what was happening.

We were going to be auctioned off as slaves.

I couldn't hide the look of disgust from my face. This was a punishment worthy of servants and laborers, not of a princess. My head told me that this was much better then death, but my heart disagreed. I would rather be locked up for an eternity then suffer this humiliation.

Only a few minutes had passed before the auctioneer had made it to me. I was next to last; the man standing beside me was the Prince's younger brother. We had only met once, but I knew him to be a much kinder man than his brother, and I had always been anxious for another chance to meet him. I would never had imaged that this would be that chance.

He grinned at me as the announcer behind us pocketed the money he had made from the last person he had sold. After rattling the money around greedily, he placed his dirty hand on my shoulder. I tried to shrug it off, but that only made the audience laugh and the man press down harder. I hated the feeling of being powerless.

Hardly anyone in the audience had left. It seemed they were all waiting for me and the Prince's brother. However, I felt quite far from being honored.

"This fine lady," the announcer's voice boomed, making my ears throb. "Is the Princess of Moscow. She might not be good for anything involving strength, but she's a real good looker, and I'm sure you'd have no problem putting her to work," he sneered as the entire crowd laughed, some making very obscene gestures at me.

"Four of my best chickens!" Someone in the crowd offered, but the announcer shook his head.

"Not for this beauty," he yelled back in response, denying their offer.

That was it. I couldn't take anymore. Before I knew what I was doing, I heard a sickening cracking sound coming from beneath my right foot. Apparently I had stomped on and broken a bone in the foot of the announcer.

Crying out in pain, the man hobbled to one side and feel on the ground. The stunned audience had quieted, giving me the opportunity to yell "Run!" in the ear of the Prince's brother whom my left ankle was attached to.

Less then a second later, we were off, streaking past trees and bushes and people. The crowd behind us was trying to catch up, but their attempt was pointless. We were far ahead of them.

We would have made it all the way to the castle gates too if not for sheer bad luck. The Prince's brother and I ran past the door leading to the gate right as it opened to reveal a small, gangly servant boy whom I ran into head first as we both fell to the ground..

People soon swarmed around our heads, picking me up, then the man I was attached to, and finally the boy. The people patted the shocked boy on the back and thanking him for stopping us, as I felt myself being thrown onto someone's back.

I would have fought and punched, but it felt useless. This was the third time today that I had been captured and my body yelled for me to just give up. I was exhausted and I assumed that I would die soon anyway as they threw both me and the Prince's brother into a cell and locked us away.


	4. Chapter 4

I laid in the corner of my cell for a long time, not moving, barely breathing, wishing in vain that my captors would have killed me; anything to save myself from this agonizing feeling of hopelessness. It wasn't until sometime later that I realized I wasn't the only one locked up in this hellhole. Rolling onto my side, I squinted in the darkness to make out a shape buried in the shadows of our cell. "Hello," I called out, my voice sounding like that of a dead person.

"Hello," a voice said in response, sounding…amused? I knew the voice; it was that of the Prince's brother. Boris, I believed his name to be. "It is nice to finally meet you princess, although I deeply regret that we have to become acquainted in such an unpleasant circumstance," he continued politely.

Sighing, I stretched my sore muscles so I could stand up and move closer to him. I liked to be able to interpret facial features while a person talked. Small things, like the twitch of the lips or a narrowing of the eyes could allow me to decipher the true message behind a person's words. It bothered me that I couldn't see his face in the poor lighting. I already had bad vision to begin with; this was just an additional inconvenience.

Once I had gotten close enough, I sat down facing him, my back to the cell door. "It is nice to finally meet you as well," I smiled, feeling silly. It had been quite a long time since I had smiled at anything other than another person's misfortune. "Do you know what happened to any of the others?" I questioned him.

Frowning, Boris shook his head at my last question. "I only know that my brother is dead," he admitted, although I couldn't tell if he felt remorse or relief. His face was difficult to read. "But enough about the dreary situation we're in, I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to discuss it later. Tell me about yourself princess," he said gently, his words laced with heavy curiosity.

Smiling at how pleasant it was to speak with Boris, I decided how to answer his question. But first, I had one small request of him. Something I had never asked of another before, "Please, call me Konchaka."

* * *

It had been a few weeks since we had been thrown into this dungeon. It was hard to measure time accurately with no window or human contact with an outsider. Our food was thrown throw the bars of the cell, and the people that delivered it ignored our questions. After a while, we stopped asking them. My relationship with Boris had evolved first into a friendship and then into some form of a partnership.

We knew everything about each other; our childhoods, our goals (at least before we were condemned to rot in a cell), and our desires. Boris had always been outshined by his older brother who was heir to the throne, but that left him much time to spend how he pleased.

He enjoyed learning about foreign lands and he wanted to travel to faraway lands someday. He spoke as if it was still somehow a possibility, even though we knew we would both be locked up until we died, but I never had the heart to correct him when he spoke of his impossible future.

It wasn't long until our relationship took a romantic turn. He was everything I wanted and thought I would never have. Somehow, he felt the same way about me. We spent our nights (or it could have been daytime for all we knew), curled around each other as though afraid to let go. We were all each other had left, and that knowledge was the only thing that gave us the willpower to survive.

We knew things would change eventually. They would finally decide to execute us or something of that manner, but at least we knew that we wouldn't outlive each other for very long. Perhaps if there was an afterlife, we would be together there. Free from this miserable place.


	5. Chapter 5

A few months had passed since we had seen the outside world. Food was growing scarce and impossibly blander than ever before. Both Boris and I were curious as to what was happening to their awful kingdom, but, like always, we received no answers until one awful day when everything changed.

Although I would never admit it to Boris (because I was terrified that I was losing my mind), I often thought that I saw shadows that moved. But every time I tried to follow them, they vanished. Sometimes I would see it every night. Other times, it would be a week until I spotted the mysterious shadow again. I tried not to let it trouble me. The terrible lighting was probably playing tricks on my eyes.

The day started off just like any other; Boris and I were in each other's arms, breathing lightly, savoring the moment. Our food was already waiting for us- cold porridge. Again. I woke Boris up by gently shaking his shoulders and swept my long, black ringlets away from my face. Sometimes I wonder what I looked like, after months of being locked up down here. My naturally pale skin must now be on the verge of ghostlike from being without the sun for so long. My already slender body must look skeletal and my beautiful clothes were all but rags. I was sure that had I a mirror in the cell, the only part of myself I would recognize would be my bright blue eyes.

Crawling to the front of the cell, I retrieved our meals and passed one to Boris. Smiling to each other, we each raised a bowl to our lips and gulped down the food like uncivilized peasants, both nostalgic about the feasts we would have been eating if not for this war.

It wasn't long after I had raised the bowl to my lips and took my first taste that I caught a glimpse of the shadow again. Only this time, it was getting nearer to the cell until it disappeared completely. I rubbed my eyes to get rid of the crazy hallucination, and by the time I had opened them again, there was a man standing in front of my cell, staring right at me.

The first thing I noticed about the man, even in the poor lighting, was his paleness. Impossibly, he was whiter than me and I briefly wondered whether he had been trapped down here too, but quickly dismissed the thought. His clothes were much too new for that of a prisoner; he wore a classy red shirt and black pants with a black traveler's cloak tied around his neck. If I didn't know any better, this man could have passed as a prince, though I was sure no prince would pay a visit to the dungeons. He had a well-manicured crop of black hair on his head, and I couldn't help but notice that his every feature was absolutely perfect. I had never before seen one so beautiful as he.

"I have to get you out of here," he said in a peculiar, satin voice, but his words were drowned out by a loud, metal screeching noise. I wasn't sure how it happened, but one second the cage in front of my cell was there, and the next second it was gone. The noise was followed by frantic footsteps from above and a few yells of help from the guards.

"Who are you," Boris yelled to the man, squeezing me to his side as though to protect me from the stranger that could lift the bars of our cell as though they weighted no more than a feather. As the man opened his mouth to answer his question, the door to the dungeons slammed open as three guards rushed down the stairs to our cell.

"Princess, you have to come with me," the stranger said, as he reappeared in the blink of an eye right beside me. Grabbing my arm, he easily tore me from Boris's grasp and I began shaking uncontrollably.

"No!" I screamed, but my words were useless. I was already outside of my cell, watching as the guards reached the man I loved and quickly slit his throat with their sword. I watched him fall to the floor, dead, and that was when I passed out, still in the arms of the stranger as he flew out of the dungeons, out of the castle and into the night within mere seconds.

------------

It wasn't long before I gained consciousness again, at least, it didn't feel very long. But when I woke back up, I wished more than anything that I could have remained blacked out. Everything was wrong. My head was spinning, my eyes could see nothing but blurs, I had no control of my body, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I was barely aware of the fact that I was in someone's arms, and I knew that we were in motion, though I couldn't see well enough to know how fast we were going or where we were. All I knew was that somehow, I was dying a slow, agonizing death and I prayed it would be over with quickly.

I wasn't aware that I was lying down until I could feel the hard surface under my body. My limbs were thrashing wildly and I was barely able to tilt my head to the side before vomiting an impossibly large amount of blood.

"Please kill me," I urged the stranger through my clenched jaw. Although I couldn't see him through my blurred vision, I knew he was still there, and I wondered why he was doing this to me. What had I ever done to deserve this?

"Ah, but what a waste death would be," he responded in his smooth voice, unnaturally calm despite standing beside a dying person. "I have a much better use for you princess. Would you like to live," he asked slowly, as though we were having a pleasant conversation drinking tea.

"Yes," I screamed, as my body continued to shudder violently.

"Very well then," the stranger said in return.

I could feel the stranger's body moving closer to my own. His gently fingers brushed aside my hair to leave my neck exposed. I wasn't sure what was happening, and I knew that I was hopeless to fight against it, so I did nothing as the man lowered himself to my neck and brushed his lips against my skin.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. The man bit through my skin, hard, and began sucking my blood. Through the pain, I found my voice and screamed loudly, not because of the pain but because I was shocked. My scream was silenced as I felt myself on the verge of unconsciousness again. Everything was cold, although my body had stopped thrashing momentarily. I was barely able to move, but I felt thankful for the numb sensation that was taking over.

The man removed himself from my neck and staggered away from my body, as though in pain. I knew that I only had seconds left, but I watched the man with curiosity as he dug a fingernail into his wrist and blood began to pour out.

He walked back over to me and held his wrist close to my mouth. "You need to drink from me," he told me, offering no other explanation. A voice in the back of my head screamed in protest, but I took his wrist anyway, finding just enough strength to bring it to my mouth.

It tasted salty, as all blood did. At first, I wasn't sure why I was drinking from this man, but as the moments passed, my rational thoughts disappeared and my desire for his blood took over. It was all I wanted, all I ever wanted. I had never had a craving that was so intense. I drank it with a new strength, despite the weakness of my body, and all too quickly, it was over.

The man ripped his wrist from my grip, and my head slammed down onto the surface he had laid me on. For a brief second, all of my pain was gone, and I thought it was over. I was going to see Boris again; the thought put a smile on my face.

That was when the real pain, a hundred times greater than before, began.


End file.
